Just saw it, and I think it's mediocre.
I had heard about the directors previous big movie, Monsters, and avoided it. I knew exactly what the reviews and opinions about that movie were referring to, that it was about hinting at these creatures more than giving them a lot of screen time, and I knew I had no interest in seeing that, so I didn't. But this is Godzilla, I did want to see that, and here I see the same thing happening that I had previously avoided subjecting myself to. I don't think it works for this movie. You can tell that this is something that the guy is treating as an artform, he prides himself in his skill (and I think it really does take skill), to underwhelm the audience ever so little, in an attempt to break out of the race for ever bigger spectacle, and to give more weight to that which ends up being seen. But this is not what I want to see in a Godzilla movie.
The final battle happens at night, and I think this was a bad choice. The thing about these creatures is that they are huge, but when you can't see a lot of the city around them that the battle is happening in, then you lose your sense of scale, and I think the monsters were a bit wasted here. The scene before the battle, where Godzilla shows up in the Bay, and the one after the battle is over, where he is again seen in broad daylight, are much better, because you do get a sense of how huge he is. Unfortunately, the first of these scenes is very short, and the latter only shows him leaving for the ocean again.
I did not like his design all that much, though that will be subject to taste. I thought that his face was a bit too expressive/overanimated, and I guess I expect big things to be slower and all around more rigid, so this made him a bit less believable, or so I felt. Maybe I also wasn't quite convinced by the CGI. Same thing applies to his chest, which was bulking a lot with his breathing, and I thought was a bit too much.
The story barely even exists. The frame is all coincidence, making these creatures show up wherever our main character happens to be, or where his family happens to be, and everything else that happens is completely pointless. The human plan for dealing with the situation doesn't factor in at all, which, if you insist on making the movie about the humans more than the creatures, it should.
Then there is the blatant fan service, which directly contradicts earlier claims that this movie would treat Godzilla as a force of nature. It does not; it treats him as an overgrown Raptor Jesus. Godzilla is our saviour, his only purpose is to kill the bad bad monsters which do us harm. Why? They could have made it that he eats them after he kills them, but he doesn't. It doesn't make a lot of sense, although there was a scene of boring exposition which I used to go take a piss, maybe there they explained that he hunts and kills these creatures out of some reflex, as some animals instinctively kill each other, because they compete for the same resources, or to protect their young. But even if that was the case, when his reasons are only talked of, and not shown, then they are simply justification for a script that was already written and had holes in it, rather than an actual plot point.
There was too much goodwill for Godzilla, and too much empathy was asked of the audience to bring to the table, without justification in the movie itself. This is also fan service, done in a bad way. He is a giant lizard that happens to fight other giant creatures, and preferrably in our puny little human cities. There is absolutely no reason for trying to make it so emotional when he goes down one moment, and rises up again in the next. It is embarassing, actually. After he finished his opponents, a caption on the news read, "Has the king of monsters saved our city?" After some gentle stroking and buildup, I guess this is the moment where we the audience are supposed to cum in our pants.
The music was a mess of unrelated tunes.
I mean yeah, I didn't really care for the movie, but I do like Zilla as a monster and I think he deserves another shot. Like you said, the show was really good.
